I could definitely tighten up my definitions here. I’m using “violence” broadly, to refer to a range of actions from murder to “silence is violence”. Within that range, I’m assigning relative values to different kinds of violence, rather than creating a violent/nonviolent dichotomy. Most people do this, consciously or not, but I’m not sure how consistent I’ve been.
I don’t mean to handwave the collateral damage done by looters who can follow property violence by antifa for any reason. I’m sorry it came off that way. I meant to say that antifa generally sees this as unfortunate collateral damage that we don’t know how to stop when it happens, since usually by the time looting starts, the police have arrived and are indiscriminately tear gassing. Antifa folk will refuse to protect property when actual people are being hurt.
We don’t look for fights but generally see the growth of fascism as an attack on people to the benefit of things that aren’t people, like businesses and property. To that end, we tend to pop up wherever we think we can apply effective pressure against that growth. If more people like yourself consistently peacefully protested, ran for office, and tried to change things, the members of Antifa would be peaceful protesters alongside you. It’s the nature of fascism to encourage complicity and apathy.